Last Sunday BThomas, TeamAlamo (the Y chromosome portion), and I met to do the now infamous "Happy Birthday Joe Spaz" series that had been newly placed in Fremont. Although I had met both cachers before, that day was my first time caching with this dynamic duo. Considering the thousands of finds that they share, I assumed that they operated together as a well-oiled machine, ticking caches off the list with a no-nonsense clockwork precision, and I looked forward to watching them in operation and learning any advanced techniques they could teach me.
Imagine my surprise then, to find I had fallen in with the Geocaching Odd Couple - except I couldn't quite tell who was Felix and who was Oscar. TeamAlamo was always thinking two caches ahead, and in a mild panic that we would run out of daylight before we ran out of film canisters to find. BThomas was happy-go-lucky, unconcerned with anything but finding the hide and a good picture to go with it. They bickered about everything - where to go, in what order, where to park, when to eat, what to eat - everything. I just sat in the back kept my mouth shut and tried to hang on, since BThomas's cache-mobile has never had the shocks replaced in over 250,000 miles of travel.
Our team did get to use the latest in technology. TeamAlamo had a new Garmin Road-something that beeped and booped and told us where to turn, but never when. Much of the day was spent listening to TeamAlamo yell "turn there!", followed by BThomas yelling "where? where?" followed by cursing and U-turns. Along with an incomplete warning system, the unit had a bothersome way of leading us in and out of cul-de-sacs, but we dealt with that by ignoring them until we came close to a cache site. All except this one time...
We had just left number 10 - or perhaps it was number 12. Maybe it was number 21, they all sort of ran together after awhile. Anyway, that GPS started beeping something awful and the next thing we knew it had routed us into a graveyard. This graveyard was one of the old fashioned ones, with paths barely wide enough for horses and short stone fences between the plots. We had pulled into a little drive and were bouncing along slowly, but even at a slow speed being inside that thing was like being inside a paint mixer. I stupidly said, "maybe we should have gone for number 14", TeamAlamo couldn't get the road route thing to behave, and then BThomas saw a gravestone he said was 'neat' and jerked the wheel.
What happened next is mostly a blur, like something from the Blair Witch Project, with bad lighting and whirling camera angles. We bounced back and forth on the path between the fences, BThomas screamed and tried to keep us from smashing over on our side, TeamAlamo yelled and hollered, tried to grab the wheel, fell back and in a rage threw a cache that bounced off my head and out the window. I just dove to the floor with a nasty welt on my forehead and cowered under a jacket until everything quieted down and came back to normal.
Somehow BThomas had managed to turn us around and get us back on a real road. Everyone was self-consciously quiet while we putted along, except for the GPS which kept up a steady stream of boops. TeamAlamo seemed to understand them and he cooed softly to the device to settle it down. We spent the rest of the day visiting pocket park after pocket park, calmly finding film canister after film canister. I seem to recall we went 32 for 35 on the series.
There's no use in asking us much more about the cache, or the graveyard, or anything. BThomas shows classic symptoms of Lacunar Amnesia. TeamAlamo is seeking help for Repressed Memory Syndrome. I, on the other hand, have a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I'm haunted by their contorted faces, green lawns with playground equipment make me dizzy, and I can't even look at a film canister without getting the cold shakes. My therapist has advised me not to discuss it with anyone.
I do recall that I was getting ready to hand-enter a coordinate during that horrible graveyard incident, and when TeamAlamo threw the cache I pressed 'mark' and captured our position. There's no good reason why it wouldn't still be there. Be careful though - those graves are old, and a big fella standing on top of one might cause it to give way. We wouldn't want that, now would we?
The cemetery closes at 5pm or thereabouts, and they have a habit of locking cars inside.